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Brewers' slugger Ryan Braun will miss the rest of the 2013 season(Getty Images)

Marvin Miller, the first full time executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, once called the issue of steroids in baseball a media-driven controversy. His successor, Donald Fehr, on whose watch steroids became rampant in the game, resisted testing for several years on privacy grounds before finally acquiescing just a tiny bit – allowing announced testing in spring training on an anonymous basis that would allow further action by MLB only if more than 5% of those random tests came back positive.

The union’s current leader, Michael Weiner, didn’t arrive until well after Jose Canseco, BALCO and the Mitchell Report were old news. With the cat long out of the bag, Weiner seems to be doing the smart thing: cooperating with the Commissioners office to help clean up the PED mess, while protecting his guilty members enough to allow them to get on with their careers after doing some time.

Weiner’s statement after Major League Baseball announced that Milwaukee Brewers star outfielder Ryan Braun would be suspended for the remainder of the 2013 season following an investigation of Braun’s ties to the Biogenesis lab in Florida, the source of alleged dope dealing to several MLB players: “I am deeply gratified to see Ryan taking this bold step…it’s good for the game that Ryan will return soon to continue his great work both on and off the field.”

Other players on the Biogenesis list, Alex Rodriguez and Nelson Cruz among the more notable of them, can choose to fight harder against big suspensions if they want to. But there’s no doubt that Weiner is looking at Braun’s case as a model the rest can follow: take your lumps and move on. The public will see a game that’s finally getting cleaned up once and for all, and it will see our union as a partner in that effort, not a hindrance to it. Miller might be turning over in his grave, but it’s a good deal.

It’s certainly a good deal for Braun. With 65 games remaining on the Brewers’ schedule, he’ll forfeit roughly $3.5 million in salary. It amounts to chicken feed relative to the big extension he signed prior to the 2012 season, one that takes him all the way through 2020 at increasing levels of salary that reach as high as $19 million per year. He’ll make $113 million from 2014 to 2020, with an additional club option of a $20 million salary or $4 million buyout for 2021.Basically, his steroid punishment amounts to the confiscation of some tip money and a vacation from the dog days of a lost Brewers’ season.

While his wallet will suffer minimum damage, Braun has to be eating some crow here. Last season, when he managed to beat a PED rap on a procedural technicality, Braun maintained his innocence, cooed that he had “nothing to hide” while reminding the world that he had passed multiple drug tests. Now, 14 months later, he’s sitting back and accepting punishment, acknowledging that he’s “not perfect” and has “made some mistakes.” Translation: They got me this time.

But while Braun loses some face and possibly some endorsement opportunities along with it, he doesn’t lose his career or his Brewers’ contract. If Rodriguez and others cut similar deals, Weiner will be a happy man.